


It's Worth Deciding

by AgingPhangirl (Madophelia)



Series: Trope-a-Dope [1]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 5 Times, 5+1, 5+1 Things, Coming Out, M/M, Secret Relationship, keeping it secret, liveshows, trope-a-dope project
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 05:37:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10550964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madophelia/pseuds/AgingPhangirl
Summary: The five times Dan and Phil nearly came out in a live show.......and the one time they did.





	

**Author's Note:**

> [Killingmeitsso2yearsago](http://Killingmeitsso2yearsago.tumblr.com) said: One of my favourite is when one of them is doing a liveshow and somehow they slip up and they coming out live :-)
> 
> I loved this prompt, so I made it a 5 + 1 (I know, how many more times am I gunna do this with a simple prompt?)
> 
> Don’t forget you can Send me prompts for this project with the most-used Phanfic tropes and i'll write you a fic/drabble/one-shot based on it :)

**1.**

It was a stupid idea really. He should have known better than to move the time of his show without telling Dan, but he really had wanted to finish the level of the game he was playing before he started and Dan was usually tuned in in the next room anyway. Except this time.

This time Dan had gone to see Louise and had come home at 9pm expecting Phil to be finished with his live show and ready to settle down on the couch for the evening, had set about making them dinner, oblivious to the fact that Phil was still maintaining a one sided conversation with thousands of subscribers in their living room.

It wasn't his fault, it was barely Phil’s, but Dan didn't hear Phil talking and Phil hadn't told him that he'd decided to move the live show to half 8. Consequently, he was still live to around 15,000 people when Dan came storming into the living room carrying a jar of pasta sauce and one of curry. 

“Pasta or curry, babe?”

Phil whipped his head up. Dan was out of shot, standing off behind the laptop, but his voice was instantly recognisable to the thousands of people watching. 

The chat was awash with ‘Is that Dan?!’ and ‘OMFGOD DID he just call Phil Babe?!!!!!’ it was moving so quickly Phil could only just make each message out before another one appeared. 

Dan was quicker to react than Phil, jumping in front of the screen waving the jars and laughing it off. 

“This guy” Dan said gesturing to Phil with one of the jars. Phil isn't sure which one. “Slave driver, I tell you. You lose one little game of rock paper scissors and I have to cook his stupid dinner…”

“Fair's fair” Phil said distractedly as he watched the chat still moving at lightening speed. 

Dan stayed until the end. Moving the conversation on to commenting on other questions from the chat. Phil wasn't sure they were even real, but he mostly just let the moment wash over him.

They ignored it, like they always did. Tumblr debated the audio clips of it for a few weeks, arguing over whether Dan's voice had said ‘babe’ or ‘mate’. It became another thing in their history, more dubious ‘proof’ dragged out at random intervals but neither of them acknowledged it again.

Nothing really changed except that Phil didn't forget to tell Dan when he moved his live show anymore and after that, Dan always left a moment's pause before saying anything upon entering a room. It was another adaption they made, another concession to their ongoing secret keeping and it didn't really bother them, much.

This is what they’ve decided.

**2.**

Rule one of a Dan live show: never take anything he says seriously. He'd tried to hammer this point home over the years, mostly he was successful and the ambiguity worked well with his branding. The end result was that most things he said were taken out of context, but they weren't said with much context anyway so it usually didn't matter so much. 

Live shows were always a cause of mild anxiety for Dan, which is probably why he kept everything so blurry, fell unexpectedly into pseudo-intellectual rants and ‘accidental’ life advice. 

Phil obviously planned his, bringing props and conversation starters, as he often did in real life interactions, whipping out unexpected animal facts at the mere hint of a dip in activity. Dan planned too, but he planned what to say, wrote down bullet points of which life events he could talk about, referred to videos and tweets, inane stories about domestic tidbits that fueled the chat just enough to keep them from insisting he answer the bigger questions. In short, he walked a fine line kept only in tact because he tried his damn hardest not to be caught off guard. 

Which is why a combination of tiredness and rushing causes him to unravel. 

He’d run in from a busy day, barely had time to even log in to the site and battle with error messages and agonising loading times before his own face is staring back at him from the screen and he realises he’s forgotten his trademark post-it with acceptable anecdotes, left it on the desk upstairs in the office where it sits uselessly on their wall calendar. 

It isn’t too much of a big deal at first. The chat is mostly tame, asking him how he is and about tweets he’d posted in the last week and the video they’d uploaded on the gaming channel and he manages to stay within the realms of acceptable. 

But he’s tired. So tired from the day and running about and all he wants is to crawl into bed beside Phil who he knows is sleeping off a headache in the next room. He hasn’t been home all day but Phil had text him earlier to say that he was experiencing one of the bad ones and that he was going to take pain killers and get into bed early. 

And Dan hadn’t been able to come home yet, being in so much of a rush from the meetings he’d had to attend alone, which meant he hadn’t even had chance to go and see him before he had to start the stream, so when he sees the five hundredth ‘get Phil’ appear in the chat he’s almost had enough. 

“I can’t get Phil” Dan says with a sigh, “He’s asleep in the bedroom.” 

It takes him much longer than it should before he realises his mistake. _The._ It’s simple. It should be _his_ or _Phil’s_ but it's not. It is The really. The room he’s in now is, for all intents and purposes, Dan’s bedroom. In the sense that all his clothes and stuff are stored in here and all of Phils are stored in the other one, but they don’t sleep in here. 

Perhaps if one of them is feeling particularly insomniac that evening they will, or when they are trying to avoid the inevitable sharing of germs when one of them gets sick, or for appearances when people not in their inner circle stay after house parties. They even, on occasion, make a show of sleeping apart after some stupid fight or other but it’s only a matter of time before one of them is crawling in beside the other, pressing cold toes against warm shins and sliding into each other’s arms with hushed sorrys and gentles kisses. 

It’s all over the chat. It’ll be all over the internet come morning in ‘Phan proof’ compilation videos and gif sets and god knows what else. He’ll have the phrase ‘asleep in the bedroom’ tweeted at him for weeks and it’s enough to make him exhausted of it all. He ends the show early and doesn’t even bother to tidy up. Simply shuts his laptop, turns out the lights and makes his way to Phil’s bedroom. 

He strips down to his boxers, lifts Phil’s laptop from his side of the bed and crawls in beside him. 

“I don’t think it’s that bad.” He hears whispered into the dark. 

“God, you were watching?” 

Dan feels Phil shrug as he slips an arm over his waist. “I haven’t seen you all day.” 

“Missed me eh?” Dan tries to chuckle, “You’re such trash for me.” 

Phil rolls over to face him in the dark and nods. “Since the first time I saw you on skype. Kind of reminded me of when you used to ramble on while I fell asleep.” 

“Yeah I was incoherent and stupid then too.” 

“No,” Phil says, sliding his nose against Dan’s and dipping to kiss him softly, “You were perfect.” 

He’s soppy and sleepy from the painkillers. Drowsy and beautiful in the dim light and Dan hugs him softly into his chest, heated skin again his.

There’s some silence as Phil lets his eyes drift shut again, relaxing into Dan’s arms, legs mingled together beneath the sheets. 

“You really think it won’t be that bad?” 

“No,” Phil sighs, “I think it will. And you’ll get it worse than I do as always, but we’ll ignore it and it will go away. 

“Right.” Dan agrees faintly, because that’s what they do. “Is your head still bad?” 

“Hmm” Phil says without opening his eyes. 

Dan slides one hand into Phils hair and strokes it lightly, running his fingers over his temples and forehead. “Better?” 

Phil hums at the contact and Dan continues stroking until his breathing evens out and he’s soft and pliant in his arms. He stayed there, a hand in Phil’s hair and the darkness of _the_ bedroom surrounding them and they don’t decide anything, but then they don’t really need to.

**3.**

Phil doesn’t mean to. All he did was answer the phone to his mum like he had done numerous times before, always with the rushed ‘I’m in a live show’ at the beginning. Not that he’s afraid she’ll say anything, because she never would usually, there’d be no reason for her to and yet… 

“Hi mum I’m in a--” 

“I can’t stop love,” his mum barrels on over the top of his warning, “I’ve got so much to do. I just wanted to check whether you two are still coming up this weekend.” 

“Yes but--” 

“Good. Wouldn’t want you third wheeling with Martyn and Cornelia.” 

“Err… Great. Yeah. Got to go mum, I’m in a liveshow.” 

“You’re what--” 

And phil puts the phone down. He doesn’t think he’s ever put the phone down on his mum before. 

It’s not what she said exactly. Because the fact that Phil is bringing _someone_ to his parent’s house this weekend, someone who will stop him being a third wheel, doesn’t mean that its Dan. But the implication is there. And the fact that he’d be third wheeling alone doesn’t mean that the person making him not be a third wheel is his own date. But the implication is there. So it stands to reason that nothing his mum said would imply that Dan is coming, as his date, to a wedding of a family friend and they’re staying at his parent’s house this weekend. But the implication is there. 

And it’s that implication that makes him put the phone down and become distracted and lackluster for the rest of the show. It’s there in the comments, the speculation and the questioning, but Phil tries to ignore it. It’s the usual tactic.

“It shouldn’t be a big deal though” Dan says later when he’s hopped up on the counter next to Phil who is stirring spices into chicken in a pan. 

“It shouldn’t” Phil agrees, “But that’s our life I guess. It’s the price we pay.” 

“You always say that. But, I mean, would it be a big deal if we just, didn’t censor this stuff?” 

Phil rests the spoon on the edge of the pan. 

“What are you saying?” 

“I don’t know, exactly” Dan admits, “Just that it’s fucking stupid that I can’t go to a wedding with my boyfriend without thousands of people on the internet commenting on it.” 

“Well, I don’t think it’s quite as simple as you’re reducing it to there but… in a way you’re right.” 

Dan huffs and Phil moves the pan from the heat, turns off the stove and moves to wiggle between Dan’s knees. He slides his hands to the tops of Dan’s thigh and squeezes gently. 

“One day it will be that simple” Phil promises with a casual kiss pressed to the end of Dan’s nose, “One day we’ll just be able to say we’re going to a wedding and everyone will think we’re boring and be so over it that no one will even tweet us.” 

“So we’re closeted and popular or out and no longer relevant. Great positive outlook on our future there Philly.” 

Phil pouts and puts his arms securely around Dan’s waist. 

“You know that’s not what I meant.” 

“What did you mean then?” 

“I meant that one day it won’t be a thing. We’ll be out and happy and everyone will just be used to it. It won’t be news.” 

Dan sighs and ducks his head to rest his forehead on Phil’s shoulder. “How do we get to your magical utopian future?” 

“I don’t know,” Phil says honestly. “But we will.” 

It feels like a decision. It’s not something they've vocalised before, at least not to each other, but it’s out there now, swimming around them, tempting and vibrant.

“I want to go to there,” Dan whispers, only smirking slightly. 

“Stick with me,” Phil assures him, “I’ll get us there.” 

**4.**

YouTube parties. There’s a certain unspoken pact that everyone enters into in the environment that makes them drop their guard. It’s an unspoken rule that cameras are to be left abandoned out of sight. They all need a moment of reprieve, of being out in the world without fear, not trapped behind locked doors, hidden and secretive. They can share themselves with this corner of the world, because it isn’t just them that are tucking themselves back away as soon as the cameras come out. 

And so they relax. Slips fingers between fingers, step into each other’s space, touch longer, smile wider and drop the pretence that so often lingers over them. They are not careful, because they don’t need to be. 

Beyond the bubble they’ve created is the circling hazard of inexperienced youth. Unbeknownst to them a 16 year old YouTuber, new to the scene and recently denied the pleasure of ordering alcohol at this party, decides to make a name for himself. He loads up the live stream section of instagram and announces in a hushed voice, face illuminated by neon flashing lights, that he’s going to expose the reason why no one vlogs at YouTube parties. 

They aren’t the only ones he captures on camera that night. A few other secrets are exposed, and in much higher definition than they had been. But even the blurry image of their backs, bodies pressed together from shoulder to hip, arms slung carelessly about each other, faces dipped close, is recognisable enough to send a shockwave through various social media platforms. 

Tumblr blogs zoom in tight, Twitter accounts make their profile pictures this solitary still image of two dark haired blurs leaning towards each other. It’s not proof, but it’s damning anyway. 

It doesn’t last, and neither does the young YouTuber’s career, but it’s enough to stir a conversation that’s long overdue. 

“We need to decide.” Phil announces. 

Dan doesn’t need to ask what about. “We do.” 

“I have absolutely no idea how though.” 

Dan shrugs, “Me either. We’ve sort of backed ourselves into a corner haven’t we?” 

“Liars or hypocrites,” Phil agrees.

It’s a phrase they’ve said so many times over the years. They come out and they’re liars. Judged for keeping a secret that formed in the early days, when they were trying to protect the fragile, sacred thing they’d been building. Just holding it back between them until it felt more solid, more permanent.

So they lied, by omission if not by the constant use of ‘friend’ when they meant ‘partner’, ‘lover’, ‘everything’. By the time it felt real enough that they could have shared it, it was too late. Their careers and lives twined so tightly but so precariously that any tiny shift could mean eternal ruin, especially when they’d made so many sacrifices, taken so many risks, just to have a chance at it.

They come out and they’re liars. Or else they keep their secret and they’re hypocrites.

They have chanted a constant litany of self acceptance through the years. The mantra of ‘do what makes you happy’ put forth from both of them in various and prolific ways and it’s a small irony that they don’t take their own advice. But they’re never actually decided that this will be their lot forever, have never actually drawn a line in the sand that they’ll never step over. 

They can be one, or they can be the other, and as the tweeted replies, tumblr tags and youtube comments roll in, each touting one blurry image as a demand for satisfaction to a question that has been asked more times that they would ever dare to count, they have to decide. 

**5.**

In the end it’s not quite an accident, but not yet a conscious effort. They simply stop… trying. They don’t lower their guard, don’t start flaunting about everything they hold most precious, but they do stop the obvious denial and argumentative contradiction. 

It’s a joint live show because they have news. There will be a video too but they’ve wanted to express it more fluidly, to feel an instant response perhaps rather than dragging themselves through the effort of shooting and editing and waiting while the comments load. Instead they huddle close together on their couch, framed from the waist up and full of happy, excited smiles. 

“So we’ve got some news,” Phil says about 40 minutes in, swiping his fringe back into place with the side of his fingers. It’s nervous habit that Dan grins at fondly. 

“That’s right you fiends, hold on to your trashy bedazzled hats cus me and Phil, we’ve got some pretty big news.” 

Phil wants to roll his eyes, because Dan playing up to a camera is just so typical but it’s something he’s grown so accustomed to over the years. So much so that now he’s exasperatedly fond of his weird over-egged danisnotonfire personality. 

“Why are their hats bedazzled?” 

“I don’t know,” Dan says with a side eye to the camera, “You’d have to ask them. Weirdos.” 

“You can’t call them weirdos, Dan.” 

“Course I can Philly. They’re weirdos, with their weird kinky group chat names and their meme trash shitposts. Yeah…” he leans closer to the laptop, pointing an accusing finger, “you know who you are.” 

“Dan, Dan, stop.” Phil says with a tender hand on his arm, “Sit back down.” 

“Fine Phil, protect those smol beans.” 

“I will.” Phil coughs, “Err… so, news.” 

“Yes.” 

“Do you want to tell them?” 

“Macie in the chat says HURRY UP, OMFG.” Dan laughs. He’s clearly enjoying the build up. 

Phil is too, but he’s unnaturally nervous about it for some reason, there's a lot sort of riding on it and they have no way to tell how people will react. The live show chat is just a tester anyway, so they can prepare for the onslaught when they actually do put out a proper video tomorrow. By that time it will be all over the internet anyway, and hopefully people will be used to the idea. 

So Dan’s worried and is over acting everything. Swinging from one extreme to the other, loud and brash and fidgeting with things just out of eyeline of the camera. He’s distracted like he always gets when his head is full of the ‘what ifs’ and Phil is distracted by Dan. 

Which is why he can be forgiven for jumping the gun and letting the phrase ‘we bought a house and we’re moving and we won’t be in this flat anymore’ spill from his mouth like rainwater where they’d agreed they’d remain ambiguous on the exact capacity in which they had acquired said new living quarters. They’d planned to hint at renting again, they’d planned to say ‘we’ in a way that didn’t imply they had made a huge real estate investment. Together. With joint finances.

They hadn’t planned to lie, just skirt around the truth. Phil, instead, had blurted it all out.

But they don’t see the expected explosion of ‘Phan is real’ in the chat, though it’s most certainly there. Instead it’s crammed between the barrage of ‘OMG’ and ‘I’m so happy for you guys’ and ‘yay storage’.

People are happy. And they aren’t focussing on the lie, aren’t calling them out on everything that has previously gone unsaid or been blatantly refuted, instead they're focussing on the future and what is to come. 

It’s harder when the video lands, and they receive far more of the expected commentary on the situation, even though they tried to tamper the message slightly so that not so much of them is exposed. Settling for, ‘we’re moving to a new place’ rather than Phil’s original, but more revealing, statement. 

But the initial flood of positivity fills them with hope that it might not be as bad as they fear, and when they close the laptop lid after the live show and grin at each other with a sheen to their eyes they’ll deny later, they don’t need to voice their decision out loud.

 

**+1**

“Hello” they say in unison.

“I almost said DanAndPhilGAMES and panicked that I hadn’t thought of a name” Phil laughs.

“Why would you--” Dan start in a high pitched voice, “No, best not to ask. Hi everyone, welcome to the live show.” 

“I’m just used to doing it when you’re sat next to me,” Phil shrugs, grinning widely and spinning in his desk chair slightly. 

“Oh cus of the computer chairs?” Dan asks, “Grace in the chat wants to know why we’re sat in the computer chairs and where are you and Blah blah blah. All in good time Grace, all in good time.” 

“You can’t keep them hanging.” 

“Can’t I?” Dan says, rubbing his hands together. 

“No.” Phil shakes his head defiantly in Dan’s direction before turning back to the camera. “You guys know we’re in our new house and this,” he waves his hands about manically, circling the blank space behind them, “Is going to be the new gaming room.” 

“Yeah, totally snazzy background. Don’t worry, we won’t be leaving it like this is just things are hectic people, there’s only so many boxes of stuff I can lug about before it becomes like, actual exercise.” 

“I know my arms are killing me,” Phil demonstrates by wiggling his arm, “When did we get so much stuff?” 

“I don’t know. But anyway, I’ve got lots of ideas about the aesthetic of this background, I can feel the creative juices flowing and…” 

“Dan.” Phil interrupts. “The people just want the sofa bed back.” 

“Well too bad you little shits, cus it’s gone.” 

“Yeah, it was so broken guys, it never recovered from when Dan broke it so it was a casualty of the move. Like, the minute we tried to move it…” he makes a breaking noise. 

“When I broke it?” Dan’s mouth falls open, “Right guys, write in the chat who you think broke the sofa bed.” 

They watch it scroll for a moment.

“See.” 

“I didn’t break it.” Phil insists, “I didn’t.” 

“Whatever Philly. Megan wants to know when they’ll get a house tour.” Dan read, “We just moved in so probably not for a while. We have boxes everywhere, I don’t know how we’re going to get to the bed.” 

“I know,” Phil responds without missing a beat, because this had been the plan, their decision to do it with as little fanfare as possible. “I swear the bedroom is the worst. Emily in the chat says ‘make a box fort’ that’s a brilliant idea.

“Nope. I can see you getting excited about it Phil but honestly, we’d have to stack stuff so high cus we’re like giraffes and it’s just asking for trouble.” 

“You’re no fun.” Phil pouts.

“I’m tons of fun.” Dan insists, followed by an improvised little hum, “God the chat is going so quickly.” 

“The bed.” Phil says, deadpan. “The bedroom.” 

“Yeah yeah, old news. Keep up guys, its 2018, stuffs gone down in the past year, haven't you been paying attention?”

“Let’s do some premium messages.” Phil says and then tips his head sideways slightly as if checking to see whether Dan agrees. 

“Trashpile324- Good username there- says ‘Get a dog’.” Dan reads, “Maybe,” he shrugs, ”at some point.” 

“Doggo!” Phil enthuses, “Cus, garden.” 

“Yep. Totally Shibe-friendly the new garden.” 

“Or corgi.” Phil insists. 

Dan rolls his eyes. “Eternal debate” he says to the camera, “Don’t even think about what happens when we try to name it.” 

“What's wrong with Thor?” Phil asks

“Nothing exactly, except I’m not shouting Thor in the park when we take it for a walk.” 

Phil laughs, tongue poking between his teeth. 

“It’s got to be something that’s reflective of us as people and of the dog’s personality.” 

“Rebecca says ‘if it's this hard naming a dog can you imagine them with kids’ yeah I know! It’s difficult cus it’s like a huge responsibility naming something or someone. They have to live with it. Forever.” 

“Whatever man, they can change it if they want to. No pressure. Like, they can be whoever they want to.” 

They both giggle and they leave the subject there, move on to other things. That’s enough for one show, and the chat is exploding as it is. They don’t ignore it, not this time. And they don’t cover anything up or lie or hide, but they don’t come right out and say it either. 

It’s all there though. Between the lines, hinted at, implied, in the footnotes. It’s there if you look, and this is what they’ve decided. Because the time for explaining and going over everything has long since passed. They were never going to be like that anyway.

Instead they decide to just, live. To just be. And it’s easier than they thought it could be, quieter and calmer than they’d thought possible. 

Eventually they say ‘babe’ in a live show without it being a dreadful mistake. They slip ‘boyfriend’ and ‘love’ into conversations without much fuss. Letting it trip over into ‘husband’ and ‘family’ a few years after and ‘dad’ after a few more.

It happens without acknowledgement that it is, worked into the tapestry of their lives as if it had always been there, threaded through their world in ways that make you squint to see how anything is different to how it had always been.

They decide, and they keep deciding.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/agingfangirl) and [Tumblr](http://agingphangirl.tumblr.com) for updates on all my fanfiction exploits.


End file.
